


dreaming again of a lonesome world

by Sharkchimedes



Series: kissed in cosmic dust [1]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: "but what if they were bird people", F/M, Origin Story, canon is like small meaty bits in a giant pot of headcanon soup here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 20:26:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19708795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharkchimedes/pseuds/Sharkchimedes
Summary: A brief recount of the last years of Arcturus IV and the origins of the Ogordian Starhawk. Alternatively, "two birds sit on a cliff and become a near-celestial when one falls off".





	dreaming again of a lonesome world

**Author's Note:**

> this is probably the most flowery thing i've ever written in terms of style and the most self-indulgent in terms of looking at canon and going "hmmmm how can i change near everything". enjoy!

They are the last two of their kind.

The Ogord clan had been one of the few left before their homeplanet was abandoned, and now, light years on years and many, many dead and cold stars from home, Ogord is the only one that remains.

\---

This is how it happens:

The Hawk-God made the Starhawks long, long ago. He had gifted them with their inner flames and set them on the fourth planet from their star. He watched over the first few flocks as they spread across the surface of their world, keeping them safe from predators and the storms. Then he disappeared, as any half decent celestial being _should_ do. 

Arcturus IV spun on without him, generations of Starhawks rising on the winds and their dying ash spread across its seas and vast deserts. Chicks hatch and grow and fledge and grow and the cycle goes on anew.

And then, it stutters.

\---

He hatches- and that is the right word, because only true mammalians are _born_ \- fuzzy topped with stardust, into the cliff faces of the Ogord sea. When he opens his black, bleary eyes, the sky above Arcturus IV is full of starhawks.

He watches them as they soar and land, shifting seamlessly between beings of starfire and the vessels in which they keep those fires tended to while on the ground. 

His parents return from their fishing trip, and he is named Stakar Ogord, first for the memory of a relative, and Ogord as all who dwell on the cliffs. 

A few nesting holes away, another chick hatches, just as star-dusted and with the same dark pools for eyes. She is named Aleta Ogord. 

\---

There is little known about the starhawks of Arcturus IV. What little is recorded is mostly in collections of starfaring myth: that back in the earlier days of travel, before the days of the jumps, starhawks would chase ships and fly alongside their prows. A starhawk was a sign of good luck, and they were often the first warning of danger: a wake-riding starhawk would vanish into the stars at the first hint of conflict, or so it was said.

Some histories of the ancient extinctions may have a footnote, some remnant of a smudged legacy that speaks of the Arcturian hawk as hunted for their brilliant plumage and the starfire energy that was imbued in them. Or the simple sport of hunting a creature that turned to ash at death. Others might mention how the Arcturian blood of those who no longer carried the fire died out not long after the hawks of the fourth world.

Today, there is a short, succinct entry in the great Nova Corp Guide To The Known Species: Starhawks are a mythological animal found in spacefaring cultures and in the writings of the extinct Arcturians. 

The system itself is abandoned, the worlds all turned to desert and oil-slick seas, their supplies of solar-charged ores long since exhausted by their first inhabitants and only crumbling cities and the occasional ghost ship adrift in orbit above.

Of course, that's only partially true.

They aren't extinct _yet_ **_._ **

\---

They are born a species that belongs to the water and the wilds, to the sky and the void. Within them burns the fire of ancient stars, bright as Arcturus in the sky above. His parents tell him that one day, he too will stand at the edge of their nest and fly. All Arcuturians from the fourth planet out are Starhawks underneath their outer skins. 

(He does, but not as they had probably hoped. But given the migraines and flashes he finds later, he wonders if they didn't know. It is something he will never know, for all he does, whether or not his peculiar talents came from his parents or came at the expense of the rest of his fire.)

For now, though, his efforts are focused solely on surviving the seasons until fledging. This means a _lot_ of sitting in their little nest hole of the rookery, and waiting. That is, until Aleta comes tumbling into his home one afternoon.

She particularly appears out of nowhere, running into him as she falls into the nest hole. Stakar doesn’t know what hit him. Where his hair is more dark brown, her’s is jet black and her eyes are green like the trees that cling to the saltgrasses at the top of the cliffs. Stakar’s have gone from the hatchling black to blue like the ocean below, and that’s the first thing she comments on. 

She never does apologize, but he doesn’t care. 

Aleta, as it turns out, gets as bored as he does with sitting and watching the sea, and likes to climb the cliffs up and down. Her ending up in his nest was an error, but one that changes the course of both their lives. 

(Stakar sometimes jokes that maybe she would have liked falling into the nest of someone with a stronger fire that matched her own more, to which Aleta always punches him in the arm and tells him not to be stupid.)

Aleta sneaks to his nest, and shows him her collected trinkets from scavenging on the shore. She has shells, bits of washed up sea plant that have dried in the sunlight, and large grey scales from the skins of the tidal fish. She is far more skilled at getting down than he is, and he loses a foothold more than once following her down the rocks.

He’s good at knowing what the things she finds are, and she keeps him from falling from the cliffs to hit the sand. They sit by the tidepools and watch the others as they wade and dive, or fly off on their long fishing trips.

They go from Stakar and Aleta, to Stakar-and-Aleta, because where one goes the other follows.

\---

Starhawks were essentially immortal. It took a _lot_ to kill one, which was why the dying off of the colonies and the destruction of the fires in the fledges was so terrifying. 

Of course, where there is a species, there will always be _some_ way to kill it. Starhawks were hardy perhaps as the Hraxians across the galaxy, but neither was fully untouchable. While most things would burn in their internal fire, there were things that when burned would _seep_ into them, slowly picking crack by crack into their resilience. If your body was broken too badly, then your fire couldn’t sustain you. If one was trapped away in the dark, it would drain the heart away.

All fires went out someday.

\---

There was something wrong with the older fledges, though. Stakar and Aleta watch as the first of many falls from the air currents. 

The adults talk about the world changing, about invaders who capture wandering youngsters and take them _away_. They speak of strange smells and metallic tangs in the fish in the waters below. Things that fly that aren’t starhawks, but are like those ships used by those spoken of by those rare hawks who have flown beyond Arcturus IV and the safety of her sun.

Some suggest that the time has come to leave the cliffs and the ocean below and take to the stars, this time forever, to take their fiery forms and find a new home.

Others say that there have been hunters before, and will be again, but that they must stay. Wanderers rarely return, after all, and how long might it take to replace the red cliffs? 

Neither side knows how to fully convince the other, and it is beyond the understanding of the young birds. All they know is that there are very few in their age group, and most stay loners to practice jumping from the shortest ledges to see when the fall is jarring.

Stakar and Aleta watch as more and more fledges fail to take the air. Thankfully, few are hurt in the fall, but the atmosphere of the nesting burrows gets thicker with worry each time feathers puff off in a cloud. A proper fledge should only dissipate when withdrawing their fire back into the safety of their body to land.

She asks him if he believes that their season will take to the currents or if their feathers too will retreat back beneath their skin. Stakar doesn't know. He has a strange feeling growing in him that something is coming, and that whatever fire will roar to life in him may not be enough.

He doesn’t tell Aleta. He doesn’t want to worry her. 

\---

There are other uses for an Arcuturian’s inner fire, they discover during their first years away from Arcturus. Stakar is rather fond of simply channeling it as a blast- it feels better than using a plasma-powered pack on his gun, which he prefers to simply load with the old fashioned sort of ammunition. Aleta’s skills lie in crafting walls and shields of light. Stakar can make thin, star-hot blades of fire arise from his shoulders when need be.

(But neither of them ever properly fledges like tradition demands. That’s alright- why start being the proper sort now? They already curse the Hawk-God have a leaning towards… the less savory elements of life.

A flame can be an emblem for a pirate as easily as it can be the symbol of a blazing hawk.)

\---

A year before they are meant to stand at the top of the cliffs and light their wings for the first time, they run across one of the old tunnel mouths. Aleta, who has always had the better judgement, tells Stakar not to follow them down into the ancient burrows.

Stakar does anyway, and Aleta, of course, follows, grumbling about keeping him from getting eaten by any sea snakes that have taken up residence. 

They come out into a wall full of carvings, and for a moment, Stakar thinks _maybe_ , just _maybe,_ they have found some sort of help. The writing is old, but legible, and it’s possible that there may be some record of the old failed fires.

The legends say that the Hawk-God punished some of the ancient birds for their pride or for displeasing him by taking their fires and casting them out onto other worlds, and that a missing flame meant a curse. The walls agree.

“This- this isn't helpful!” Stakar punches the wall, ignoring the twinges up his arm. “So fucking _what_ if there were half-fledges before, they sure weren't fucking dealing with the _Reavers_ then!” 

Aleta is watching him from a perch on one of the ancient stone alcoves. “You didn't actually expect to find anything, did you?”

Stakar sighs. “No, not really.” And that is true enough- all there is to be found in the ancient tunnels below the nesting cliffs are these unhelpful scrawls and a water pitted likeness of the Hawk-God, damaged by the seasonal tides. Mostly, they had come down here to just get _away_.

Aleta’s father, the head of their flock, is nearly insufferable these days, when he isn’t gone for days on end and only the Hawk-God knew where. Thinking about the missing head always leaves a sour pit in Stakar’s stomach.

His own parents had been lost with the last rains. His father they’d found snared on a Reaver’s trap and spilling ichor across the dusty earth. His mother had simply vanished. He was now one of many orphans their own age. He is just thankful to be one of the eldest of their number, and not one of the hatchlings who has been left without providers. 

They all do their best to carry for their dwindling children, but at least Stakar can fish for himself, even if he and Aleta aren’t of fledging age. 

Aleta flicks pebbles at the walls, before she jumps and comes over to take Stakar’s hand in hers. “Stakar, c’mon, let’s go back up. This place… it can’t help us.”

She’s always known better than him when to quit, so he follows her back up through the tunnels.

\---

But Stakar did find something on the walls. 

Turns out, there _have_ been weak fires before, like the one he feels in his chest. Not _missing_ fires, like the fledges, but weaker ones, the sort that can’t flame up earlier in preparation, but still burns in the eyes and in the ichor. 

In _seers_.

He pushes away the shaking his hands and tells himself that it’s nothing. He doesn’t _see_ the future, he just gets feelings, certainties; they’re always traceable back to logic.

Right?

\---

As things do, it all changes. 

Another flock comes to roost on the cliffs, taking up with whoever has extra room. The grounds to the southeast have gone, crumbled under metal and roaring winds. 

Only a third of those nests have made it to the cliffs.

By that time, their own flock has lost many of its former number. Most of the failed fledges were either chased away or chose to leave on foot. Perhaps, they had said, there will be easier hunting elsewhere, and fishing grounds that do not need to support a flock.

(They must leave, they had said. A starhawk without the fire to fledge is no starhawk at all. Just another of the land-bound, like the rumored peoples that exist off their world. The other Arcturian bloods, abandoned by the Hawk-God. They had said that the false fledges posed a threat to what fire-blood is left.

Stakar remembers the caves beneath their nest-holes, and looks to Aleta, and they both know that whatever fire-blood is left has been _long_ abandoned by the God. No number of exiles will draw the Hawk back to them.)

Aleta’s father is only seen every other week now. The sickly feeling in the pit of Stakar’s stomach gets worse, and he has a harder and harder time sitting still. Aleta, who has dragged a branch down from one of the scraggly trees clinging to the top of the cliffs and taken to peeling the bark, doesn’t chasitise him like his parents would have as he picks at his nails and shifts constantly.

And then, the Reavers come.

\---

Neither of them remembers much of the first few hundred years after they left Arcturus IV. It’s a blur- a constant stream of overlayed images, smells, and thoughts. Trying to untangle it would take another lifetime. Their time now is dedicated to watching over their self-made flock. There is nothing to be learned that will help them _now._

All they need to know is how long it takes Stakar to deplete his furnace with blasts and how long Aleta can hold a shield. The amount of starlight it takes for him to recover, and the limit to Aleta’s ability to be social. How where Aleta’s temper ends, Stakar begins, and how to defuse both before anyone has a solar blade in their face. 

And of course, the proximity they need before they start to meld into one.

\---

The whole sky goes dark with stirred up dust and shadow, the storm clouds above letting lose at the same time the engines come roaring in. The ground shudders and the rocks begin to fall as if the summer rains have hit all at once. 

The rest of that day is as blurry as the following centuries, with a few exceptions:

Stakar falls from his nest, and Aleta jumps screaming for him after. 

Her hand touches his shoulder, and the world around them goes bright like a bursting star.

He and she are now they, and they are _the_ starhawk. They are The One Who Knows. (Who knows of Arcturus IV and the red rock cliffs, the cries of the colony and the destruction that rained down and silenced them. Who knows of the Ogord cliffs crumbling behind them, of barely escaping a darting that would have killed them. Who knows of the sudden breathlessness of leaving the atmosphere behind.)

They fly away from what was home, and their wings carry them through the galaxy. 

(Later, they realize just how odd they are, for the wings of a starhawk to rest on one and the body in another, but they also think of the ancient tales of ash meeting ash among the stars and being reborn in flame together.

This, they decide, is like that.)

And thus the Ogord clan lived on.


End file.
